I’m still way behind on book reviews, but here’s #32. I read the first in this series book earlier this year, and liked but didn’t love it. My feelings on this one were similar: I liked the narrator better, but felt the story wasn’t as strong. My full review is over at Active Voice.

I ran some errands during my lunch break yesterday. I had some checks to deposit and the most convenient place is a cramped ATM vestibule near my office. It has four ATMs, but no space for anyone waiting to stand, and when I got there they were all busy. I stood near-ish to the last one, with a line of people who came in behind me, so it was pretty crowded; I was wearing my headphones and listening to my iPod, which is true of about 90% of the time I’m outside my apartment.¹

I was endorsing a check, writing on the back of my book (because I always have a book in my purse, duh). I had a vague sense that the woman at the nearest ATM was flustered, inserting her card again and again. I heard her say something in my general direction, but thanks to the iPod (and noise-canceling headphones, I hate earbuds) I didn’t hear what. I took off my headphones and moved maybe a half-step forward, and said all of, “Hm?”

And then she yelled, “You’re too close, Jesus!”

I got as far as, “Sor — ” before she stormed off.

So I used the ATM and walked off grumpily. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I had been attempting to apologize. And frankly, rudeness irks me pretty badly (don’t even get me started on the guy who walked into the vestibule from the other side and cut the whole line, something that is never, ever acceptable). It wasn’t until I was down the road on my way to the post office that the situation flipped in my brain.

From the perspective of Grumpy Stranger Lady, she was using the ATM and clearly having some sort of issue with it. Some stranger was standing too close, making her uncomfortable, and was off in her own world wearing headphones instead of paying attention to what was happening around her. Maybe she was having a bad day, or was just easily flustered, or short on patience for whatever reason. Regardless, it occurred to me that if she were to tell the story of our very brief encounter, she’d be the reasonable one, and I’d be the rude one.

The thing is, she isn’t wrong; that was reality as she lived it. I’m not wrong either; she was pretty rude. In objective reality, we probably both could have done better, with me paying more attention and her being less snippy. Whatever, it was an encounter that lasted about two seconds, and didn’t have any lingering after effects. But it was a tiny moment of eye-opening for me.

I’m bothering to write this down because I’m someone who reads all kinds of blogs where people share very personal experiences (not to mention I work at a website which features personal stories in a major way). You can see some of my favorites in the link sidebar, but I read a lot about feminism, anti-racism, GLBT activism, anti-ableism, and so on — lots of people examining and trying to figure out how to dismantle societal privileges and *isms of many sorts. I don’t tend to say much, because I rarely feel like there’s anything I can add to the conversation other than “thank you for sharing”/”I agree with you”/etc. And generally, the conversations aren’t about me. What is me talking about my experiences as a white person going to add to a post where a person of color is talking about her experiences with racism? It’s not that I don’t have thoughts, it’s that they aren’t necessarily relevant and there’s no need for me to hijack a thread about someone else to talk about my own junk. It’s a conversation I can learn from but not one I feel like I can add much to, so I am a serial lurker who is glad the big, wide internet has so many people brave enough to talk about their lives.

Back a bunch of years ago, when I first started this blog, I wrote a not-very-well-articulated, but none the less honest, post about some sexism I’d run into at the bookstore where I worked.² It was the first thing I wrote that got read, let alone linked to, by anyone other than my close friends; I wasn’t quite prepared for that, but who is? I followed a few track back links and ran into some other people’s discussions of my post. One stands out in my memory; the thrust of the post-about-my-post was, “Well, she says that, but I think she was misreading it. It wasn’t about sexism, it was just an in-group, out-group thing.”

At the time, I was really upset by that and didn’t know why. I get it now: the post was about my experiences, things I knew were true because I’d lived them. It isn’t fair for someone to say that wasn’t what happened and I was misreading the situation (let alone someone who wasn’t even there, but that’s not even close to the point). I knew what my experience was and didn’t understand that what bothered me was someone saying no, my lived experience was incorrect.

It was a pretty minor life experience. Blatant sexism, but nothing with long-lasting consequences on my life. (I learned someone was an asshole. I avoided him after that. The end!) If I was that unsettled by being told my life experiences were wrong in something fairly minor, I can only imagine how people who share significantly more personal experiences must feel.

This is probably the most no-duh-worthy thing I will ever type on this blog, but: privilege is a huge part of what makes that kind of dismissal possible. It allows people to be oblivious to the very fact that there’s another perspective to consider, let alone the validity of that experience. It lets people ignore the whole concept of empathy, of taking a few seconds to realize that other people may have experienced a situation differently, and their experiences are legitimate — even if it’s just why someone is rude at an ATM.

It isn’t just about reading blogs. It’s about being polite, because there’s a good chance the rude person you’re encountering is having a shitty day. It’s about letting things roll off your back when they aren’t personal, and it’s about respecting people when they say things are personal. It’s about having empathy and realizing you are not the center of the world, and other people have thoughts and feelings and experiences, too — and doing your best to treat them that way.

And it’s about never, ever cutting people in line.

Normally this would be a Lazy Sunday post, but as I actually did a book review yesterday, and today is a holiday, we’ll fudge it just a little. Here’s some miscellanea:

#32: Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healey

This is a really good book. It’s YA fantasy that takes place in New Zealand and centers around New Zealand’s native mythology. Healely went out of her way to make the cast diverse and inclusive — including characters of color and characters with non-hetero sexualities — and she also went out of her way to be respectful of the mythology she used. (Well, okay, that shouldn’t be going out of her way, that should just be How Things Are Done, but sadly, that often isn’t true. Either way, she wrote a really interesting blog post about working with cultural consultants.)

Since this is YA fantasy, of course, you may be expecting a link to a full review over at Active Voice… and there is one, but I didn’t write it. It just seemed silly for me to write a whole review of a book when I could basically sum it up as, what Jess said.

Link Dump

I’ve had some of these links saved for ages, so… uh, apologies for the out of date conversations? All still interesting, though!

Yoko Ono: A Feminist Analysis

And realizing that Yoko wasn’t to blame for the Beatles breakup makes you ask a question. Why does the myth persist?

I had come to believe that most Beatles historians and true, educated fans had wised up enough to see the Yoko charade for what it is. So imagine my disappointment when proven wrong. Earlier this year, I finished Bob Spitz’s biography The Beatles, which is arguably the most comprehensive Beatles biography in existence. The book starts out amazingly, but about halfway through inexplicably begins to decline rapidly in the number of details provided once the Beatles become famous. That was annoying. But far more so was the unabashed, unapologetic and shameful smearing of Yoko Ono — made even worse by its presentation as fact when so clearly Spitz’s personal opinion. And this opinion is indicative, I think, of the opinion of most Yoko haters ….

So who is the main purveyor of the Yoko myths? Can we pin it on historians like Bob Spitz? Certainly, they hold part of the blame and need to be called out on it. But no, I blame someone else entirely for the bulk of the treatment and misogynistic cultural perceptions of Yoko Ono, as did John. In the first/next part of this series, they are the people who I’m going to discuss. And their names are Paul, George and Ringo.

Indeed. It was heartbreaking for me to realize, as I went through my Beatles Phase, that they were actually kind of dicks, and definitely abusers. Trying to reconcile that with my emotional investment in them, and their historical significance… well, I still struggle with that. It sucks to realize that people you idolize aren’t perfect, and can be outright nasty.

Anyway, all the Yoko hate out there started to bother me a few years ago, and it took awhile for me to twig to why. This pretty much sums it up — plus the cultural narrative that women ruin and destroy (see also: Eve, Pandora). Definitely worth a read.

The War on Critical Thinking and Evolving Social Mores

Talk about out of date. Apparently last October, some jackass wrote an essay about how scifi is being feminized and that’s ruining the genre and also the world! Because science! You see, if girl cooties get into genre fiction, no boys will want to be scientists, and then there will be no scientists. If only the BSG remake hasn’t made Starbuck a woman!

Need I say that the Smart Bitches takedown is great?

Why I’m Team Katniss

The thing is, I can’t get past the feeling that focusing on the love triangle somehow dismisses the central point of the series. Sure, it’s a very commercial, mainstream series that is clearly meant to be a page-turning, engrossing experience. But it’s also about war, violence, mortality, and inequality. I’m a fan of The Hunger Games because of the way the books deal with these issues in such a readable yet thought-provoking (and gut-wrenching) way.

I’ve been trying for ages to put my finger on why “team” terminology bothers me when it comes to YA fiction. I don’t care, like, at all about Twilight, but that actually is a romance, but for series like Hunger Games and or Scott Westerfeld’s Pretties, both series in which I’ve seen this (and I’m sure there are more), it’s really bothered me. I know romances are compelling and even necessary for some readers (I enjoy them but don’t find them necessary to enjoy a story, personally) but to me that feels reductive. These stories aren’t about which guy the heroine ends up with. In life-or-death adventures, it really bothers me that the narrative around girls is romance, no matter how much ass they kick.

Basically, Malinda Lo says that. But way more eloquently. Totally worth a read.

Contest! That I’m entering!

The last time I entered a contest by linking from here, I won! So what the heck, I’ll try it again for the giveaway of an ARC I really want to get my hands on:

Part fugitive, part hero, fifteen-year-old Nya is barely staying ahead of the Duke of Baseer’s trackers. Wanted for a crime she didn’t mean to commit, she risks capture to protect every Taker she can find, determined to prevent the Duke from using them in his fiendish experiments. But resolve isn’t enough to protect any of them, and Nya soon realizes that the only way to keep them all out of the Duke’s clutches is to flee Geveg. Unfortunately, the Duke’s best tracker has other ideas.

Nya finds herself trapped in the last place she ever wanted to be, forced to trust the last people she ever thought she could. More is at stake than just the people of Geveg, and the closer she gets to uncovering the Duke’s plan, the more she discovers how critical she is to his victory. To save Geveg, she just might have to save Baseer — if she doesn’t destroy it first.

Buy it online at: Barnes & Noble   Amazon     Or These Fine Retailers.

(In case you are wondering, I loved the first book and highly recommend it.)

Okay, y’all. That’s all I’ve got. Happy Labor Day.

Auuugh, I am so far behind on my book reviews! That was bound to happen eventually, though, as I’m basically the worst blogger ever. So here goes. Perfect Chemistry is another book I won in Cindy’s awesome giveaway, which is great, because I probably wouldn’t have picked it up otherwise, as I don’t read much contemporary YA.

Basically: Perfect Chemistry is a YA romance in which Brittany, all-around perfect rich girl and captain of the pom squad, and Alex, a Latino gang member from the wrong part of town, are paired together to do a chemistry project. (Get the title now? Huh, do you?) They can’t stop fighting, but it’s all secretly foreplay and the sexual tension runs wild. Things don’t go well, though, when Brittany’s family life turns out to not be so perfect at all, and Alex’s gang wants him to take the leap into drug deals and murder. Can two such different people with such different problems ever find happiness together?

SPOILER!

I really, really enjoyed this book. It hit on a bunch of my favorite tropes: Alex is secretly very smart and is only in the gang to protect his family, and he’ll do anything to keep his brothers out of it! He’s tough on the outside but has a soft and sweet center, like some kind of gourmet candybar! And, uh, let’s not analyze exactly why rich girl/poor boy (and good girl/bad boy, or in this case head cheerleader/gang member) romance set ups appeal to me too much, okay? And I love, love, love “we bicker because of our sexual tension.” It’s kind of my favorite romance trope of all.¹ This book basically gave me everything I want in a romance and was incredibly fun to read.

General spoilers after this cut. Read this article »